Parenting
by Lady Eleanor Boleyn
Summary: Rosanna Evans is horrified at how her older daughter parents her son. Yet Petunia has never been too happy about how she grew up either. What happens when the two try to talk about it?


_An entry for my own challenge because I've been intrigued as to the basis for Dudley's being quite so spoilt recently. I might do a companion piece to this some day... Enjoy!_

"Why, Petunia?"

Although Petunia had had her head filled with thoughts as she re-entered the living room, having finally persuaded Dudley to entertain himself with some bricks and biscuits in the playroom, she glanced up at her mother's question.

"Pardon, Mother?"

"Why do you do it? Why do you indulge Dudley so much? He's fourteen months old. He ought to be able to self-soothe and entertain himself at least a little by now. Yet you're still running around after him as much as you were when he was a new-born."

Petunia had always been the good daughter, the one who never fought back. She'd always done exactly as her parents told her, or at the very least accepted their criticism wordlessly. But Dudley – or rather her raising of him – was the one subject she would not let them touch. She bristled, and when she spoke again, her voice was startlingly reminiscent of a porcupine's quills.

"At least I don't neglect him."

"Petunia!" Rosanna looked horrified, and Petunia felt a tiny stab of guilt, yet she couldn't help herself. Even as her mother continued, "We never ran around after you, true, but we never neglected you,", she let herself go, spilling out all the years of bitterness she had harboured in her heart for so long.

"Really? Really, Mother? So I suppose all those dinners you used to host for Lily when she came home from that freakish school, all those extra dresses you bought her, all those smiles you used to save up just for her, while I hovered in the background, weren't neglectful of me? All the times I strove so hard to make you proud of me, just to have her outshine me with the merest flick of her wrist and a twirl of her oh-so-pretty curls, weren't? All those nights I cried myself to sleep because I knew that, even though I was older, I was your firstborn, I'd never measure up to my perfect little sister?"

Petunia found herself gasping for breath and she had to fight to regain her composure, her cheeks flushed. A heartbeat passed before she could speak again.

"You want to know why I indulge Dudley so much. It's because I know what it feels like to be second best and I will never – _never_\- let my son feel the same way."

Rosanna sat out her daughter's tirade, stony-faced.

"Listen to yourself, Petunia. You're nothing but a jealous harridan. I came here to speak sense into you. If you won't listen to reason – and I can see that you won't, then there's no point in me staying."

She rose, ever graceful, even though she was advancing in years, and collected her things together.

If Petunia had known then that this was the last time she would ever see her mother alive – that Rosanna would die, not a month later from complications connected to a bout of pneumonia, then she might have pleaded with her to stay. Or at least unbent enough to give her more than an icy brush of the lips against her cheek. But she didn't.

So she let her go without anything more than that. Watched her walk out of the room without another word.

Then she sank into the nearest armchair, seething.

What right did her mother have to criticise her parenting? What right, given how she'd made Petunia feel every single day for as long as she could remember? What right, given that she'd never so much as truly smiled at Dudley since he was a baby, yet, from what she said, clearly doted on Lily's little boy on the rare occasions she got to see him? She was playing favourites, just the same way she'd always done. Well, Petunia wouldn't stand for her meddling, not any more. Surely playing favourites was just as bad as spoiling a child? If, indeed, she was spoiling Dudley, which she wasn't.

"Muma! Muma! MUMA! MUMA, MORE!"

Dudley's imperious roars startled Petunia out of her bitter musings and she sprang to her feet, smiling.

"Muma's coming, Dudders!" she called merrily, hurrying into the kitchen to fetch him more biscuits before his screams gave her a headache.


End file.
